


To Salvage One Sadness

by Nokomis



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Set during Steph's run as Robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 14:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11292801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: Dick had to hear secondhand that there was a new Robin in Gotham.





	To Salvage One Sadness

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://nokomis305.livejournal.com/118862.html).

Dick had wanted to storm to the cave when he heard, yell some sense into Bruce, but he’d done that enough times to know it was useless.

Instead, he sought her out. It wasn’t that hard, even without contacting Oracle. He recognized the route Bruce had put her on, one that had been the favorite of another Robin long ago, and felt a new wave of anger.

He’d accepted Tim as Robin, understood the necessity, but this was different. What the hell had even happened? Bludhaven -everything, all that he didn’t want to think about, but was constantly reminded of by the tight pit in his stomach - had occupied him fully of late, but he shouldn’t have to find out about this secondhand. He knew Tim wasn’t hurt or out of commission in any physical way; they would have told him about that. Babs would have, at the very least.

She was in a fight when he found her. He settled on the edge of the rooftop overlooking the scraggly empty lot she was in and tried to see why Bruce had let her wear that costume. (He was too old to think of it as his own anymore, but he hadn’t realized how used he was to it just being Tim and old ghosts until he saw her bright against the darkness, blonde and grinning and fierce in a way that reminded him of lost loves.)

She’d improved since the last time he’d seen her, and she wore his colors just as confidently as she ever had her own purples. He couldn’t see any of Tim in the way that she moved - she didn’t favor economical, practical motion. Instead she went straight for flashy, bold moves, sparing neither her opponents or her own knuckles. 

He remembered Jason laughing about feeling the sweet ache of justice as he massaged swollen, bruised fists, and, absurdly, felt for a moment like he were falling, acutely conscious of the air under his dangling feet.

Bruce had to know... Bruce knew better. 

The fight was over. Not as quickly as it would have been if it had been... one of the others, any of the rest of them, but he watched as she called it in and then twirled on her tiptoes and looked up at him, grin wide on her face. “Hey ”

He waved at her, and she took it as the invitation that it was. Moments later, she was pulling herself up onto the ledge with arms that were only slightly wobbly from her exertion. 

“So, Boss-man told you?” she asked, pushing a bit of hair out of her face. It joined the rest of her hair, tangled and wild behind her head, and Dick resisted the urge to drag his fingers through it. She did a little shimmy to straighten her skirt, and grinned at him. There was a smear of blood on her cheek where her gauntlet had brushed her face. He knew it wasn’t her own.

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t told.”

He didn’t mean to sound so bitter. She flinched, just a bit, then let out a loud sigh. “You know, this club looked a lot more glamorous from the outside.”

“Jaded already?” he said, smiling to let her know that... well, it wasn’t okay, but he didn’t resent her. Not like...

He forced himself to listen to her answer.

“I thought this was going to be great, and it is. Just. I wish everyone wasn’t so pissed off ” she said. The blood on her cheek matched her lipstick.

“Everyone isn’t...”

“Oh, you so totally are. Batman didn’t even tell you about me ” She fiddled with her gauntlets, seemed to noticed the blood streaking them for the first time. She rubbed at it a little.

“Batman doesn’t tell me lots of things,” Dick said carefully. 

“Yeah, he’s big into the secret thing. But still. You were Robin first. You should get told when there’s some new kid bopping around in your duds.” She looked displeased at her gauntlet, and spat on the dark smear, then rubbed at it again with the black side of her cape. Tim never did that. Jason had all the time. Dick had on occasion, usually when he was sure Alfred wouldn’t somehow know.

She finally looked satisfied with her gauntlets, and leaned back on her arms, kicking her legs lightly as they dangled off the side of the ledge. She wore the colors well, he thought, but...

How could Bruce put her in them?

“I didn’t run around in a skirt,” he said, avoiding the issue. He didn’t want to bitch about Bruce. He wanted to see who this girl really was. If she was really meant to be Robin or was just another one of Bruce’s ploys.

She laughed, bright against the Gotham smog. “No, you wore those very respectful panties.” Then she stopped, smile dropping from her face as she bit her lip. “I know we don’t know each other very well, and that you have to be pissed that I’m sitting here instead of Tim. But I’m serious about this, about really being Robin.”

He’s not sure what to address first, so he stood up on the ledge and stretched. It sounded like she’d been thinking this through, long before he showed up. “C’mon, we should get out of here before the cops show.”

She could keep up, he’d grant her that. He wasn’t slowing his pace any and she stuck just behind him, stumbling a little at times but refusing to give up. He lead her deeper into the city, higher into the air until they reached the gargoyle-encrusted ledge he had in mind. 

She was panting, just a little, when she plopped down beside him. “Jeez, you show-off.”

He shushed her, and motioned towards the city. “What do you see?”

“Is this another test?” she grumbled. “You lot have more hoops than the NBA.” He could tell she was rolling her eyes at him under her domino mask, and he remembered being just as annoyed when Bruce asked him questions like that. “I see Gotham.”

“And?”

“And?” Tim had never used that lightly mocking tone with him. Jason had never been lightly mocking. It was something of her own, and he was glad to see her instead of ghosts. “It’s Gotham. You know her as well as I do.”

That was it, then. She understood Gotham. Her tone was the same as he’d heard in Bruce’s voice. In Jason’s. Tim had understood the legacy, but - like Dick - never quite spoken like he was a part of the city itself. 

Dick felt that way about Bludhaven, now. He felt another pang of guilt that he was here, talking to her, instead of fixing everything that had shattered.

“I suppose I do,” he muttered. He looked directly at her, as directly as he could through lenses and masks. “Why?”

“There are a lot of ‘why’s going on,” she said wryly. She tapped her boot against the base of a gargoyle to the tune of the traffic, the city below. “Apparently Batman left, well, everyone out of the loop.”

“What about Tim?”

She looked surprised. “I thought he would call you. His dad found out and made him quit.”

“He quit.”

“And I replaced him.” Her left foot was dangling over the precipice, and she leaned over to tug unnecessarily at the top of her boot. She didn’t glance in his direction.

He wasn’t judging her any more harshly than she was judging herself, he realized. She’d leapt into Tim’s - into her boyfriend’s - shoes quickly and without much of a sideways glance, and she probably hadn’t spoken to him since. 

He wondered how Tim was doing. Why he hadn’t called anyone. How he was handling... this.

“Why did you stop being Robin?” It was a plea to change the topic, but he could tell she was curious. Her earnest expression didn’t match the fierceness of the dried blood on her cheek.

What was Bruce even telling new Robins nowadays? Even he couldn’t be as callous as to shove her in uniform and send her out with only the slightest idea of what he expected from his partner.

Or was she just a sidekick?

“I didn’t chose to,” Dick said. There was no need to get into the messy details. She hadn’t either; she would understand. “But it worked out for the best.”

“For you,” she sighed. “Tim’s never going to forgive me, but...” She finally lifted her head, looking at him directly for the first time since they’d started in on this sticky topic. “I couldn’t not. I mean. You understand, right? What this means to me?”

He really hoped Bruce wasn’t leading this girl on.

“I think I do,” he said, smiling at her. She grinned, bright as her outfit, the outfit he’d picked several lifetimes ago, and laughed even brighter. He wondered if she would have liked the circus... Her laughter reminded him of delighted crowds.

“I’m really, really glad,” she said. She patted his knee in her excitement, then blushed pretty and pink and looking, for the first time, as young as he knew she had to be.

He just grinned back at her, now wanting to see how Bruce interacted with this Robin. If he ever smiled, the way he had with... others. If she dimmed any under his shadow.

He didn’t think she would.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Starved,” she replied. “You gonna treat me?”

“How ‘bout we race?” He couldn’t resist the challenging grin.

She smirked, standing with a smooth stretch and was leaping off the ledge before he could even name a destination.

Dick laughed and followed Robin across the Gotham sky.


End file.
